Gun for hire

Page Tools

The crew of Law & Order is setting up a complicated
camera shot in New York's Times Square when a lighting problem
temporarily derails its plans.

The shadow of a skyscraper has been shading the scene all day,
but now a wedge of sunlight cuts across it. "Two minutes," someone
calls while everyone watches the shadow draw away. Then the newest
Law & Order star, Dennis Farina, steps into the
sunshine.

For Farina, the whole experience of playing Detective Joe
Fontana on one of the most successful franchises in TV has been a
chance to step back into the light. The former Chicago police
officer made a remarkable Hollywood debut in the stylish 1986 TV
drama Crime Story. He was a rough guy with a smooth manner,
a master of steely nonchalance. But despite some success in
subsequent years, most memorably in 1995's Get Shorty, good
roles have been hard to come by.

The low point came in 2003 when Farina was injured in a car
accident and forced to withdraw from the Tom Cruise movie
Collateral. Farina says his car ran over debris on a
California highway and burst into flames, but he is reluctant to
talk about the incident because of a pending lawsuit. "I escaped
and I'm very grateful to be here," he says.

Then, last year, Farina's luck changed abruptly. He was
recruited for one of TV's most high-profile dramatic roles. Law
& Order makes a virtue of plugging and unplugging actors
into the same narrative framework, but one fixture had been Jerry
Orbach, who played Detective Lennie Briscoe for 12 seasons. Last
year, however, he left the series to begin work on the third Law
& Order spin-off, Trial by Jury.

He filmed two episodes before dying of cancer in December.

Dick Wolf, who created Law & Order, says he had been
speaking with Farina for a few years about working together, but
Farina had stipulated that he "didn't want to take somebody's job".
When he told him that Orbach's reassignment had created a hole in
the police roster, Farina said: "Oh, that's different."

Farina says he was already a fan of the show because the writing
was "not dumbed down" and because the format allowed viewers to see
an entire case, from the commission of the crime to its resolution
in court. "It goes pretty quick, but you really get the meat of
each incident," he says.

As an actor, he likes Law & Order's emphasis on
process instead of the characters' personal lives. "I don't think
there's anything to be gained by a revelation of a lot of facts
about a character," he says. "I think it's more fun to unfold
throughout a series of episodes, over a year or longer, if we're
fortunate enough to be around."

As a former cop, Farina is amused by the fascination with
crime-busting scientists in shows such as CSI. "While
forensics plays a huge part in law enforcement nowadays, you still
need the foot soldiers," he says. "You still need the guy who can
knock on the door. You still need the guy who can write down the
licence-plate numbers."

Farina's character is a startling left turn from Orbach's
homicide detective, for whom the term plain-clothes might have been
invented. Fontana wears $300 Italian shirts and occasionally
flashes a horseshoe-size roll of cash. "I wasn't sure if he was a
cop or a wise guy," Detective Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin) said in
last week's season premiere. Though Fontana is not a mordant joker
like Orbach's Briscoe, there's a genuine cop-humour feel to
Farina's delivery, for obvious reasons.

He brings other straight-from-the-squad-room touches to the role
as well. Writer and co-executive producer William Fordes says
Farina's arrival meant not only new dialogue opportunities but also
impromptu lessons in police procedure. In an airport scene, Farina
races through a crowd with his gun drawn, holding the weapon behind
his back as he runs. "I didn't write that," Fordes says, but "it
looked just great. So I asked Dennis about it. And he says, 'Yeah,
I would never show my gun out. I don't know who in that crowd is
going to be a nut job, get spooked and pull out a gun and
shoot.'"

A Law & Order publicist had cautioned that Farina
does not like to be quizzed about his days in the Chicago police
department. But when the subject comes up, he willingly discusses
how his days as a real detective informs his on-screen work,
betraying only a hint of boredom. "I really don't think there's
such a thing as an ex-policeman," he says.

He is particularly proud to have put an end to the show's
overuse of the term perp to describe a criminal. "I hate that," he
says. "It's like ordering food in an Italian restaurant. My mother
and sisters cooked Italian food, and I never heard of half of the
dishes you see in these Italian restaurants. I just go in and order
spaghetti."